Monday, October 13, 2008

Busters on 28th - Minneapolis, MN

Gerd and I got invited (in a roundabout way) to an engagement party/librarian get-together at Busters on 28th. One of those friend-of-a-friend kind of things. We knew the engagees, so it wasn’t completely random. We arrived, saw their table was completely full, and got our own table. Then we went over to harass the group that was already stationed at a table in the middle of the place.

We had lively conversations, mainly surrounding the fact that 90% of the people at the table were librarians and 50% of those people had the same name. Weird that so many people are named Gerd – ha ha ha...

Gerd got a Caesar salad and some cheesy things and I got a spicy Italian panini (still not sure why, since I’m not a fan of paninis). Gerd went with the waitress’s recommendation of the Spaten Oktoberfest amber and I went with the Strongbows. Gerd’s salad was like a log of romaine lettuce that had been grilled (literally charred – though I thought chard was a different leafy vegetable). And only one side of the lettuce log was covered in the dressing, so some bites were not great. Otherwise, the good parts were really good (I had a couple of bites, just to verify). Decent croutons as well. Her cheesy thing was pieces of mozzarella with some green stuff and drizzled with vinaigrette reduction (sounds fancy, and it was). It was also really good. She liked the Spaten very much.

The spicy Italian panini was decent, but it wasn’t spicy at all. I think they left some ingredients off (mainly the peppers – which oddly, makes things spicy). It was basically a grilled salami sandwich with cheese. And I’m just not a fan of grilled chewy sandwiches – can’t say I didn’t give it the old college try though. Granted, it was good, but it wasn’t what I expected. I would probably go with a burger next time (either bison or lamb) and probably the onion rings, which looked amazing when we saw them being carried to other tables. There were some issues with breaking down our portion of the check as well, but that might have bee our fault since we switched tables and waitresses midstream. Still, it didn’t seem that hard to pay for our portion. We eventually just left a handful of cash on our group table and left.

Top 5 things about Busters on 28th1. Awesome place to hang out with friends2. Cheesy things with green stuff (sorry for all the fancy technical terms)3. Extensive beer list4. The homecut fries were very good5. Onion rings – visually only though – can’t vouch for the flavor

Bottom 5 things1. Gets really cramped when full2. Inaccurate spicy Italian panini3. Charred romaine lettuce log with minimal coverage dressing4. Can be very loud when full (like a lot of bars, so take that with a grain of salt)5. Paying for food got to be a hassle